Crave Talk: Robberies rise, escape with your iPod

Just a week ago, Gamespot journalist Guy Cocker, who works in the same building as Crave, was mugged ten minutes away from the CNET offices here in central London. His assailants held what felt like a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker’s head and told him, “we’re taking all your stuff”. They then took his Motorola L6 Slvr (iTunes compatible).

Cocker told us, “I chased them — two of them threw me against a wall and took everything. It’s lucky I didn’t have my usual stash of gadgets on me — my iPod, my Archos AV500 or my laptop. Mugging in London is out of control. I had my Motorola L6 grabbed right out of my hand”.

The papers this morning would seem to agree with Cocker. “Rise in crime blamed on iPods”, yells the front page of London’s Metro. “Muggers targeting iPod users,” says ITV. This is the reaction to the government’s revelation that robberies across the UK have risen 8 per cent in the last year, from 90,747 to 98,204. The Home Secretary, John Reid, attributes this to the irresistible lure of “young people carrying expensive goods, such as mobile phones and MP3 players”. A separate British Crime Survey, however, suggests robbery has risen by 22 per cent, to 311,000.

What can you do to foil the 8.2 per cent rise in people out to steal your iPod? The slow fix is calling for social regeneration to eliminate the state of poverty that motivates people to steal. But, if that all sounds a bit communist to you, then here are some suggestions that require very little outlay but could save your iPod from theft.